Oh, for fuck's sake

David Lynch, whose movies I enjoy quite a bit, spouts debunked New Age nonsense in the Independent:

Indy: You’re talking about Transcendental Meditation?

Lynch: Yes. Transcendental Meditation is a mental technique—it’s not a religion, it’s not against any religion, it’s not a cult, it’s not a sect. It’s a mental technique and an ancient form of meditation that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is bringing back now. It’s a mental technique that allows any human being to dive within and experience subtler levels of mind and intellect, and transcend and experience the unbounded, infinite, eternal level of pure bliss consciousness, what modern scientists call the unified field at the base of all matter and the base of all mind.

I was actually trained in TM as a teenager, but I think I was too young to appreciate it. I understand the basic principles, but not some of the concepts you discuss in the book. Like, what are peace factories?

In Transcendental Meditation, you’re experiencing the deepest level of life, and it enlivens that level, and that level is totally positive. It’s like a bright light of positivity, and when you experience it you enliven it and you grow in that. The side effect of growing that unity and that pure consciousness and that bliss, is that negative things start to recede. When negativity recedes you start to enjoy life more and more.
Negativity is hate, anger, fear, depression, sorrow, anxiety, tension, corruption, disease—all these things. When that goes there is huge freedom, huge happiness and a flow of creativity, increased intelligence, energy and power. Beautiful, beautiful things happen just from transcending and visiting “back home” and enlivening that beautiful field. If you can enliven that beautiful field as a group, it has been proven successful at reducing crime, violence, road accidents, trips to the hospital.

Indy: And you say that it takes the square root of 1 percent of the population to create a peace factory?

Lynch: It has been tested 52 times, and independently verified. It’s a group that practices advanced techniques of meditation together, enlivening that field of unity within, and pumping this light out into collective consciousness, influencing collective consciousness with harmony, coherence, dynamic peace. The side effect of that is negativity starts to recede and peace can come to earth.

Um, no. TM has done nothing like that and has not been verified scientifically. It’s a meditation technique with the benefits of such techniques and that’s it.

The interview continues with more New Age babble and a few interesting comments about his movies. Kind of a bust, if you ask me.